The Truth Behind the Tales From the Crypt Rights Issues
Weren't these rights incredibly complicated? Yes and no.
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Hello, Boils and Ghouls! It's your old pal, Kristen here! Okay, I'm not going to do this entire article in Crypt Keeper speak.
You've probably seen that after 30 years locked in a vault that the TV series Tales From the Crypt is now officially streaming on Shudder. You might also know that I'm currently putting the finishing touches on the first oral history book ever written on the series, entitled Welcome, Boils and Ghouls: The Complete Oral History of Tales From the Crypt, coming in August of 2027.
I'm navigating cutting the book down. By a lot. And since the series is now available to stream I know something the book is going to lose is all the explanation I have about what happened to the rights and why the series was trapped for so long. There are a lot of sites that tout explanations of why the rights issues were so complex and....they're not 100% true. So, here it is, the true story about why Tales From the Crypt had rights problem. Who owned everything. And who was actually involved in getting the series out to Shudder.
(If you want more Tales From the Crypt lore, drop in the comments. I'll be talking a lot more about the series as I get closer to the book's release date.)
Who Owned the Series
One of the biggest falsities I hear about the series is that HBO and Warner Bros. were involved in the rights dispute and that's a big fat no. The series wasn't seen for thirty years specifically because Warner Bros. and HBO had nothing to do with it. When HBO was first starting out they needed original content, and they didn't really care how they got it. They also needed to do it on the cheap. So, this meant their deals tended to see them as straight distributors only. You want to make a show? Great. We'll release it and you get to own it. It was a theoretical win-win. A creative got to make their series for what was presumed to be a major company and they got to own everything outright. (Mind you, there's a reason they do NOT make these deals anymore.)
